June jobs report shows US recovery is accelerating

In this Thursday, June 12, 2014 photo, people wait in line for the Cleveland Career Fair in Independence, Ohio. The Labor Department releases employment data for June on Thursday, July 3, 2014. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

A surprisingly robust job market is energizing the 5-year-old U.S. recovery and driving the economy closer to full health.

Employers added 288,000 jobs in June and helped cut the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent, the lowest since 2008. It was the fifth-straight gain above 200,000 – the best such stretch since the late 1990s tech boom.

The stock market signaled its approval. The Dow Jones industrial average surged 92 points to top 17,000 for the first time.

The breadth and consistency of the job growth are striking in part because of how poorly the year began. The economy shrank at a steep 2.9 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter as a harsh winter contributed to the sharpest contraction since the depths of the recession.

Yet employers have shrugged off that setback. They’ve kept hiring.

The unemployment rate dipped from 6.3 percent in May to its lowest level since the financial crisis struck with full force in the fall of 2008, when the Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

“This has now become a textbook jobs expansion,” said Patrick O’Keefe, director of economic research at the consultancy firm CohnReznick. “It is both broad and accelerating.”

At least one nagging doubt is dampening the enthusiasm: Can the stepped-up hiring lead to higher incomes? Wages have yet to outpace inflation for most workers. Eventually, analysts say, the falling unemployment rate should cause pay to rise more sharply. But no one knows precisely when.

The jobs report did make clear that, five years after the recession officially ended, the U.S. economy is showing more vitality even as major economies in Europe and Asia continue to struggle.

Last month’s solid hiring followed gains of 217,000 jobs in May and 304,000 in April, figures that were revised upward by a combined 29,000.

Only a LIDV actually believe this rosy blather . FACT - Record 92,120,000 Americans Not Working - The employment participation rate is now lower then when the other loser President Carter destroyed the USA.